Choosing a country may feel like the single biggest decision you have ever made.  It certainly felt like it for us.  But we were wrong, the most difficult decision was actually deciding to leave SA.  We had no idea where we would be going at the time but we knew that we were ready to leave.

It was not in the kind of way that one may say “I’ve had enough I’m going!”.   It was more along the lines of “Honey we’ve seen our friends and family leaving slowly over the years, we’ve given South Africa a good go for the past 25 years hoping that life would become easier, but we can no longer say for sure that we see a future here for ourselves and our children.”

At that point we had decided for sure that we were going to emigrate.  We’re partners in this business called Family.  Decisions are made together and need to be unanimous.  Two votes out of two.  The kids were not old enough to help with the decision so it was all on us.  Somehow, somewhere between changing nappies, school runs and work we reached an agreement to go to a new and exciting country.

I embarked upon countless hours of research on possible destination countries, their immigration processes, costs, strength of their economies, lifestyle and future prospects for our children, work and business.  In my mind I was fully ready to go and explore a new life in a new country with my family.

Exploring all options

Having all this information was amazing. I learned more than I ever thought possible about countries in Australasia, North America, South America and Europe. I learned about the good and bad going on in each country and most importantly, which countries could be a good fit for our small family.

It was a staggering amount of work, but we gained something valuable.  Learning about new countries and their immigration options gave us a greater feeling of control over where we could potentially go.  We realised that many countries still accept 40-something, non-rocket scientists. The fun was in hunting out the immigration options available to us in each country.  Even at our age, we were surprised to find that it became less about which country would be prepared to take us and more about where we would like to go.

Looking for a free passport

I holed up for a week hermit-style behind my computer tracing our family tree to see if we could claim a European passport based on ancestry. Even if you don’t plan on settling there, having a British or Irish passport means you can skip the English language exam when emigrating to Australia, New Zealand or Canada and you can visit those countries without requiring a VISA.  It makes it much easier if you plan to do an LSD trip (Look-See-Decide).  In our situation, after much genealogical research we ended up with a large and interesting family tree, but missed our free passports by a whisker.

Business emigration

We were running our own small business at the time so it was logical that we investigated entrepreneurship and startup business options for emigrating to Australia, NZ and Canada.  You’re required to bring a large amount of setup capital, which unfortunately ruled out this emigration path for us.

That said, New Zealand has some very progressive entrepreneurship VISA options which can be more affordable options for entry.  For some South African entrepreneurs, especially those in IT, there are some very favourable business migration options for NZ.

Incidentally, whilst investigating this path I learned that some South American countries have amazing business immigration options.  The Rand goes further there which means  setup costs are lower.  South America has beautiful cities, many climatic zones, wilderness, low cost of living and affordable property.

Skilled Immigration

The most affordable path, and the one we eventually chose, was to emigrate as skilled workers.  This is when you look for immigration paths based on your qualifications and years of experience.  If you don’t have a formal qualification, you can provide a skills assessment based on your years of experience.  This is as simple as submitting your work history, examples of your daily work and testimonials from your employer(s) to a recognised assessment agency.

Different countries have different skill shortages, so the idea was to keep looking to see who needed our skills.  The skills shortage lists are changed fairly regularly, so keep checking back even if you don’t see your skill listed at first.

We found a few countries needing our skills and of these, we narrowed it down to New Zealand, Australia and Canada, mainly because of affordability and a promising chance of success.

The Weather

Before we go on, let’s chat about the weather.  Every South African is concerned about weather and it’s one of the questions that keep popping up in immigration forums.  Australia is viewed as being generally hot and sunny, New Zealand is humid and rainy and Canada has a bad rep for being too cold.  These statements are true, but also very untrue.

Putting this into perspective, Australia and Canada are truly massive countries with many climatic zones.  The land area of South Africa fits into Canada 8 times and into Australia 6 times.  Varied topography inside massive countries creates many localised sub-climates where you have a good chance of finding weather that suits you.

There are places in Canada where temperatures are more moderate and it almost never snows, such as Victoria in British Columbia.  Adelaide in Australia has some of the most pleasant weather all year round, away from the hot and humid extremes of other well-known cities.

New Zealand is an island country with many tall mountain ranges.  It spans from cold southern regions in South Island to warm regions in North Island. Most opportunities (and people) in NZ are concentrated in the biggest city by far: Auckland.  The climate there is warm, humid and rainy.

The weather was never really much of a deciding factor for us. To generalise, we felt that:

  • Australia was too hot and expensive.
  • NZ was expensive, isolated, rainy and full of earthquakes.
  • Atlantic Canada with fewer temperature extremes, warm summers and moderately snowy winters seemed promising.  After experiencing our first winter here in Atlantic Canada we knew we made the right choice.

Cost Considerations

We could not justify the amount required to pay an immigration agent so I persisted on my own.  I explored each site exhaustively until I fully understood the exact immigration process for each country and how we stacked up.  I needed to be sure that we had a reasonable chance of success before starting the process for our chosen country.

Each country has a different application process and there are costs involved along the way. There are hundreds of pages, links, resources and rules on each immigration site.  It is easy to lose your way.  After many hours on the immigration sites for Australia, NZ and Canada, I finally had a complete understanding of each country’s process.

There were many other factors in our decision which we also needed to consider. I would discuss my findings with Heather and explain various paths for emigration. With life happening around us at full speed we often had very little time to discuss these important matters. I laughingly recall the day Heather was feeling particularly stressed.  She said outright that she’s had enough of listening to me go on about various immigration options and I should just pick a country, any country and we will just go there.  I did, and we did.

What does emigration feel like?

We were terrified, apprehensive and excited.  Draw a circle and write these 3 words around it, then cycle around and around repeatedly.  That was how it went for us during the entire process from making the decision, frantically compiling the paperwork, doing the tests and eventually the long plane ride and putting feet down on the ground of a brand new country. Our most joyful moment was receiving the acceptance/invitation letter from Canada and realising that this was real.